Nature produces one more clue that if any prehistoric “cave men” were the tough, insensitive brutes, it was our ancestors. Neanderthals, a new gene study has determined, … Read the rest “Neanderthals were more sensitive to pain.”
PLOS ONE has an interesting look at brain plasticity – that is, your ability to learn new things, change the way you do things, and remember where the heck you left your keys – … Read the rest “Dancing is better than repetitive exercise for keeping elderly brains fit.”
BBC is not intimidating us all with news that researchers with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology have treated a colony of dormant microbes from the bottom of the South… Read the rest “Scientists have woken up 100-million-year-old microbes.”
Scientific American looks at how these starfish relatives don’t need eyes to see:
… Read the rest “A brittle star’s whole body is an eye.”And yet now there appears to be something far stranger about the biology of at least one species:
The Atlantic looks at the problem with the way public responses to the pandemic have evolved into rituals that look “disinfecting” but really aren’t nearly as effective… Read the rest “Hygiene theater: All the hand sanitizer in the world is kinda beside the point.”
An inner ear, dear, from The human body; an account of its structure and activities and the conditions of its healthy working, by the Martins: H. Newell and Ernest Gale. … Read the rest “Science Art: A section through the cochlea in the line of its axis, 1910.”
Words are hard. It’s everything but words. Soon, soon.
“Bad Astronomer” Phil Plait, over at SyFy.com, explains a new study that demonstrates how the red giant Betelgeuse might have gotten so big – by eating another star… Read the rest “Betelgeuse, the cannibal.”
Guano mining is a real thing, and a really fascinating thing. And sometimes a really dangerous thing, too. The Bioscience Resource Project revisits the case of some Chinese miners who, … Read the rest “New COVID hypothesis: not bat meat, but bat mines.”
This is something I first assumed was a very early typewriter or printing press, from the Bavarian State Library’s copy of Bellicorum instrumentorum liber cum figuris et fictitys… Read the rest “Science Art: Mechanische Maschinen und Automaten 49, from Bellicorum instrumentorum liber cum …, 1420-1430”
Satellite Streak Watcher is a project on the AnecData citizen science site that asks anyone with a cell phone to take a picture of the night sky to see just how many satellites there really … Read the rest “Help track satellites (for astronomers worried that they’re starting to block out the stars.)”
Science Daily shares some of the discoveries from the first images of the Solar Orbiter mission – including the presence of “mini-flares” that astronomers have dubbed… Read the rest “There are campfires on the Sun.”
LiveScience has more on the entirely new, bright-edged circular objects, the so-called “odd radio circles” or ORCs that astronomers are struggling to figure out:
… Read the rest “Radio telescopes have spotted four very strange… things.”In a new
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The title here is the best I could render from the middle German “Hier Inn etliche zerbrochne Gebew, den Schreinern in eingelegter Arbeit dienstlich, auch vil andern… Read the rest “Science Art: From Here, a number of broken gifts for the carpenters and lovers…., by Lorenz Stöer, 1567.”
Scientific American analyzes the rise in LSD use and finds that it’s probably an attempt to lighten up – or at least get a new perspective – on a reality that’s gotten… Read the rest “LSD use is rising among older folks – and it’s probably because people are looking for a way out. Even if it’s way out.”
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